Mussolini’s UFO file: The 1933 Magenta Crash Declassified

by Austin Lee

In the pre-dawn haze of June 13, 1933, a quiet field near Magenta, Italy erupted into chaos. A bell-shaped craft, 10 meters wide, tore through the night sky. Its metallic hull glowed like molten starlight before slamming into the Earth and leaving a smoldering crater. Locals whispered of a “divine thunderbolt;” but this was no act of nature. 

The craft’s occupants – tall, blonde humanoids with pale blue eyes and subtle, oriental-like features – lay lifeless or comatose. Italian military police, under Benito Mussolini’s iron grip, cordoned off the site with ruthless precision. The man known as Il Duce declared silenzio assoluto, a total blackout. Journalists who dared to report on the “unknown aerial object” faced the Tribunal for State Security’s wrath, their careers and lives hanging by a thread.

Telegram from Mussolini in June 1933, ordering complete silence about “the alleged landing of an unknown aircraft on national soil.”

Guided by his OVRA secret police, Mussolini established the Gabinetto RS/33, Special Research 1933 Cabinet, at La Sapienza University in Rome. Led by Guglielmo Marconi, the radio pioneer whose fascination with extraterrestrial signals was an open secret, RS/33 assembled Italy’s finest minds to unravel the craft’s secrets. 

The craft was spirited under armed escort to the SIAI-Marchetti hangars in Vergiate, 30 miles away, a secluded fortress of aeronautical innovation. Mussolini, paranoid it could be a French, British, or German prototype, ordered reverse-engineering. Yet the craft defied the researchers. Its propulsion system lacked any conventional engine, and its alloys, with bizarre isotopic signatures, mocked the era’s best scientists and engineers. The research reports, stamped PRIORITY and MOST CONFIDENTIAL, spoke of materials forged beyond Earth’s metallurgy. This otherworldly technology, locked away in Vergiate, became the spark for a global quest to unlock its secrets.

Ancient Echoes of the Tall Whites

The Magenta craft occupants, dubbed the “Tall Whites” by Japanese allies, echoed ancient myths that fueled Axis ambitions. In 1938, Japanese envoys shared Shinto legends of the Tennin, ethereal beings with pale skin and golden hair who descended from the heavens in antiquity. These figures mirrored India’s Vedic Devas, radiant giants said to gift ancient civilizations with divine knowledge; and the Hopi and Zuni tribes’ “Star People,” pale-skinned visitors with advanced tools whose legacy lingered in desert artifacts. 

Other stories from around the world shared similar motifs. They include Turkey’s Hittite myths of “sky gods” and the Scythians’ celestial warriors of the Pontic Steppe (9th–3rd centuries BCE). The Knights Templar, during their 12th-century Crusades in Anatolia, sought relics of “celestial devices,” possibly tied to biblical Ark of the Covenant lore. 

These myths whispered of lost technology like the Vimanas – bell-shaped flying machines with anti-gravity spinning mercury propulsion engines.

Human Lineage?

Some have drawn from ancient tales to suggest that the Tall Whites are advanced humans, survivors of a pre-cataclysmic civilization. The Vedas described Patala, a subterranean realm of advanced beings, while Hopi legends spoke of “Ant People” sheltering tribes in underground cities. 

The RS/33 reports noted DNA-like structures in the Magenta occupants. Although 1930’s testing was rudimentary, the results did suggest a divergent human lineage. 

The myths and test results served to set the stage for the Axis’s obsession with the Magenta craft as a relic of a hidden history.

The Axis Quest (1933–1943)

The Magenta crash ignited a fervent Axis pursuit. By 1938, the Rome-Berlin Axis found a clandestine cornerstone in the craft, with Mussolini and Hitler’s regimes united by a quest for advanced technological power. 

Notes from 1936 described a cylindrical craft with portholes and red-and-white lights haunting Northern Italy’s skies, perhaps born from secret testing based on the Magenta anomaly. Marconi boasted of a “death ray” that could stall engines miles away, hinting at the craft’s advanced technological promise.

READ MORE about UFO’s: Beyond the Crash: Roswell, the Nuclear Triangle, and UFO Questions That Remain Unanswered

The German SS, under Heinrich Himmler, turned the incident into a crusade. His Ahnenerbe research organization saw the craft as proof of a lost Aryan civilization or extraterrestrial visitors. 

German officials scoured ancient texts for blueprints, interrogating monks and exploring key sites. They were intrigued by the Vimanika Shastra, a contested Sanskrit text, that described mercury-vortex engines and cloaking stealth-like capabilities eerily similar to the Magenta craft. 

By 1943, SS engineers reportedly experimented with Die Glocke, a bell-shaped device rumored to manipulate gravity, or possibly a nuclear propulsion technology. Intercepted SS communications, decrypted by British intelligence, mentioned “non-terrestrial engineering principles” at Vergiate. 

The OSS and Allied Response (1942–1945)

As the Axis chased the Magenta craft’s secrets, Allied intelligence entered the fray. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), America’s wartime intelligence agency, caught whispers of the Magenta incident. 

In 1944, Operation Black Orchid targeted the Vergiate facility to confirm the craft’s existence.  The OSS’s Istanbul station intercepted Axis intelligence, while a German diplomat who secretly was an OSS asset provided clues.

The Vatican, a silent powerbroker, played a pivotal role in handling the incident and the craft. 

In 1933, Mussolini informed Pope Pius XI of the crash, seeking counsel. By 1943, Pius XII, balancing neutrality with anti-Axis leanings, used Jesuit priests and Swiss intermediaries to leak RS/33 telegrams and Marconi’s notes to the OSS. 

As the situation in Europe intensified, SS and Luftwaffe units conducted a lightning raid to  seize the Vergiate’s bunker. Convoys were detected moving “strange machinery” under heavy guard. Fearing misuse by the Axis, Pius XII facilitated the craft’s transfer to the Allies in 1944–1945. 

From there, rumors persisted that components had reached various international powers. They include China, the Soviet Union, and other nations. These global pursuits, shrouded in secrecy, kept the Magenta craft’s legacy alive, a shadow driving the race for cosmic secrets.

Former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testifies before Congress in 2023.

The Modern Enigma

In 2023, David Grusch, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, reignited the Magenta enigma with explosive congressional testimony. Claiming the U.S. recovered the craft in 1944–1945 with Vatican and Five Eyes assistance, Grusch alleged that a secretive UFO program hid “non-human” spacecraft and biologics. 

His 14 years of intelligence experience lent weight to claims of a decades-long cover-up involving reverse-engineering, sparking bipartisan calls for the UAP Disclosure Act. Though the Pentagon denied his allegations, Grusch’s testimony, delivered under oath, shifted UAPs to a national security concern, tying the Magenta craft to a hidden history of Axis ambitions and OSS-Vatican collaboration.

The Unresolved Mystery

By 1945, the Magenta craft had vanished. Some claimed it was destroyed in Allied bombings, though Vergiate stood untouched by bombs. Others insisted it reached the U.S., possibly now in private aerospace hands, influencing exotic propulsion and stealth designs. National Archives’ OSS files, riddled with redactions, offer tantalizing clues but no answers. The Axis’s cosmic dreams died with their defeat, yet questions persist: Were the Tall Whites advanced humans from a lost civilization, surviving cataclysms underground, or something else entirely? 

The answer, like the craft, hovers just beyond reach, the Magenta enigma burning brighter with Grusch’s bold claims.

Austin Lee is the proprietor of Galilhub, and is a gunsmith and a competitive shooter. He writes frequently for Soldier of Fortune.